


A Romance for the Ages

by Heronfem



Series: No Church In the Wild [3]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Emotions, F/M, From Sex to Love, Getting Together, Handcuffs, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mild Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-15 08:22:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7214920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heronfem/pseuds/Heronfem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Cassandra drinks fourth rate whiskey, not brandy, Varric is in handcuffs, they both cling to the past, and somehow it works out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Romance for the Ages

Cassandra's handcuffs were dwarven make, serious business cold steel and strong enough to hold a Qunari in a rampage. She had another set for mages, and then she had the _other_ set.

Varric's set.

They were autographed.

OoO

“We have to stop meeting like this.”

Cassandra snorted, rolling her glass as she watched the ongoing pool match grow steadily more aggressive. Varric slid into the seat beside her, grinning wickedly.

“Miss me?” He asked, and she resisted the urge to shove him off the seat, instead taking another drink.

“Missing you would imply you'd been anywhere other than here, bothering me.”

Varric clutched his chest in mock hurt, still smiling. “You wound me, Seeker. Here I am, an innocent man caught up in a web of deceit-” Cassandra snorted again and he ignored her, plowing on, “And here I find a beautiful woman, who miraculously hasn't handcuffed me yet, sitting alone in the worst bar in the city drinking fourth rate... something. Is that brandy?”

“No.”

“We're going with brandy, anyway. It's very noir.”

She couldn't quite help the twitch of a half smile. “Well, Varric, the night is still young. I may get first rate brandy, and you may end up in handcuffs yet.”

“I'm kind of counting on it,” Varric said, and Cassandra knocked back the rest of her drink in one go.

oOo

It wasn't that she and Varric were an item of any kind. They were just two people running circles around each other in a city that didn't give a damn about either of them, so they tended to consider it just really odd foreplay. Varric would do something, she would retaliate, he would run, she would chase, and eventually they'd wind up in bed, or in an alley, or once in the back of a squad car having really great hate sex.

Varric was, not to put too fine a point on it, a squirrely fucking bastard. It was an aspect to him that Cassandra both loathed and adored, because on one hand it meant getting anywhere near the Champion of Kirkwall was completely impossible, and on the other hand it meant that he could evade others of her order and her type, leaving him safe. It also meant that sometimes he could find people that she couldn't so much as touch, and deliver them neatly packaged on the station doorstep. The most recent time was for Lovers Day, and the man she'd been hunting for had come with a bright pink bow on his head and a cheerful heart drawn in lipstick on his cheek.

Cassandra knew she was playing with fire, and honestly, at this point she really didn't mind.

Saturday night rolled into Sunday morning, and she woke up feeling pleasantly loose, Varric's arm around her waist and sunlight streaming in gently through the windows. The curtains billowed slightly with a breeze- soft lace, they had been a gift from Varric.

“Morning,” Varric murmured, and she sighed quietly at the kiss to her neck.

“Have you been up long?”

“Nah, just about ten minutes. Thought I'd enjoy the sunrise.” Cassandra hummed, burying her face deeper into her pillow. “Hey, you on call today?”

“I am always on call, Varric. Justice never sleeps.”

He snorted, smoothing one broad, sturdy hand over her side. “Justice was snoring earlier. You know what I mean. Am I going to have to disconnect your phone to keep you in bed?”

She smiled into the pillow, and relaxed further as he curled in closer around her. “I am not on call today, no.”

“Good,” he murmured in her ear, and she sighed quietly as he began running his fingers through her hair.

Times like these she wondered what they were doing. There were days when all they seemed to be was sex and violence, and then there were mornings like this, quiet and tender. She rolled over, pulled him into a kiss, and let her thoughts be pushed away.

oOo

She'd been having a perfectly lovely day when the call came in.

“Seeker Pentaghast,” she snapped into the phone, neatly writing out the name of the jittery man beside her. Yet another ex-Templar who needed the attention of a clinic, she was in the middle of writing a recommendation for his release into the tender mercies of former Knight-Commander Giovanni Du Raquett, who ran a rehabilitation center.

“ _Ma'am, it's Tethras again._ ”

She sighed, resting her forehead in her hand. “What has he done _now_?”

“ _Errr. He's, uh. He's been in a barfight._ ”

“Maker preserve me,” she growled. “Where, and with whom?” She waved at one of the equally jittery new officers to take the man to the hospital wing of the Seeker offices and stalked towards the door.

“ _Er. It wasn't him who started it ma'am. He's... he's been beaten and stabbed. His in Our Lady of the Skies Memorial Hospital, and you're his only emergency contact._.”

oOo

They met when she was younger. Happier. Less worn down by life. She'd heard of him before, but when she was hunting Hawke she couldn't bring herself to be distracted by him. And then Hawke fled, she wound up with the Inquisition, and things were different. She'd found Mahanon with Leliana and Solas, had helped him form the office and gave him the power to push forward for justice. And Varric had been there, all the time, always in the background. Mahanon liked him, and the pair of them had often spoken quietly together on many occasions.

Varric had first taunted her a week after Mahanon came to power, sitting down by her at a bar and needling her. How they wound up fucking in the back alley they could never agree on, but they did fuck, and Cassandra went home, showered, and didn't sleep that night. She'd been too wound up from laughing, and too wound up from the memories dredged up from hands on her hips. Regalyan's picture on her mantle had only smiled, and had no answers for her.

It was all fun and games, for a long time. Just flirtation that turned to sex, just a way for both of them to let go of the past that dogged their heels. Varric only asked once about Regalyan, and she had only heard the name “Bianca” as he dreamed fitfully, thrashing in his sleep on her bed. They knew who they were, at the end of the day, even if they didn't want to admit it. They were quite the pair, and Cassandra shuddered to think what her life would be like without him. There had been precious little laughter before he came, and no lazy Sunday mornings being read to while she ate homemade omelets and was coaxed into talking about her week. They were a pair. A partnership. A- something. They were something.

She stared at him from where she sat in the hospital room, hands clasped tightly in front of her. _Dwarf_ had never quite registered, but he seemed so small in comparison now. The mechanical beep of the machines registering his heart rate were far faster than her own- small body, quick heart. His face was severely damaged. Both eyes were blacked, his nose was broken, his lip was swollen and split in two places, and a long cut ran along one cheek, almost the twin of her own scar. His hands were splinted and bandaged, several of his fingers broken, and his chest was positively swaddled in white bandages. The lung had been healed, but was still tender where the blade had slipped through ribs and punctured it.

A slim young man in Healer's green stepped through the door, looking skittish, and Cassandra fixed him with a stare before he could even open his mouth.

“When last I sat with a man I loved in a hospital, I left before I had a chance to say goodbye. I would not advise telling me to be elsewhere.”

The man paled, swallowing hard. His throat bobbed a moment before he said, tentatively, “Would you like a pillow?”

She felt very old all of a sudden, and looked back to Varric, sleeping on.

“Yes,” she said, “I would.”

Cassandra kept vigil at his bedside that night, and was there when the healers came in at sporadic intervals. His nose was fixed first, as much as it could be, then more work was done to his tender ribs. The swelling was taken from his lips, the cut on his cheek cleaned and magicked back together as if nothing had happened. His eyes, they told her, would have to heal naturally. His body was under too much strain as it was, magic being foreign to dwarves.

She slept in fits and spurts, and woke around eight to a hand nudging hers. She lifted her head, and saw Varric smiling crookedly at her.

“Hey,” he said, his voice raspy.

“Hey,” Cassandra echoed back, the word odd in her mouth. She took his hand, gently, and he slumped against the pillows.

“Guess you're pretty mad, huh?”

“No,” she said, keeping her hands gentle. “Not at all.”

“I'm keeping you from work.”

“I have already called and told them I will not be in for the next week. I have a great deal of vacation time saved up.” Cassandra reached up, gently combing his hair away from his face. She had seen it down only a few times, and it was still odd. “I was told that I am your only emergency contact.”

Varric sighed, looking up at the ceiling. 

“Not Hawke,” Cassandra continued, quiet. “Not Isabela or Fenris, or any other friend. The Iron Bull would have been a good pick. Mahanon, Leliana, all of them. No Carta or Merchants Guild representatives, just me. Why?”

Varric's eyes flicked to her, lips twitching into a smile. “You know why.”

She did, and she swallowed hard.

They sat in silence for a long time before Varric said, “Bianca.” He cleared his throat. “Bianca, Bianca Davri, I was in love with her for a long time. And she wasn't my class, so she and I couldn't be together. She got married off, and every time I contact her they send assassins after me. You know how it is. The one that got away, and all that crap. Never been able to get over her. But, shit, I needed to try. So I wrote her, told her that she should try and be happy and that I was getting there. And then they came to get me.”

“I see,” Cassandra said quietly. She'd seen similar things before, with nobility that didn't want their children mucking up the blood of their line with the “lesser” classes.

“It's shitty,” Varric said, his voice cracking. “But I don't want to keep living with ghosts.”

He pressed his healed hand to his face, hiding his eyes, and she stroked his hair as he wept. 

Some wounds had to be lanced before they could heal.

oOo

Varric was still tender but mostly healed when Cassandra woke beside him and said, “Let's get married.”

“Sorry, what?” Sleep was still fogging his mind, and he leaned into her, letting her burly arm hold him close. 

“We... we could marry. In time. If you wanted.” She was very stiff. “It is a terrible thing to ask when we are both so fresh out of hurt, you quite literally, and I apologize, I merely had to offer.”

“Hey, hey, whoa there. You sure you want to marry a petty criminal and hack writer?” Varric asked, pulling back a little so he could see her face. Cassandra looked dead terrified and completely determined, as if she had just thrown herself off a cliff and was going to fly one way or another. He loved that look. “Oh, shit, you do.”

She made a noise of deep disgust. “Varric, do not downplay yourself-”

Varric kissed her, and her fingers came up to twist pleasantly in his hair. For the first time since the fight, he could breathe easily, the ache in his chest disappearing. The world was still a mess, he still had deadlines to meet and people to shake down and Coterie thugs to have eviscerated, but this, he understood. Cassandra, eternally aggravating and eternally beautiful, was a rock amid all the other messy storms of life that were being tossed at him. 

“If nothing else,” he said when they parted, “it'll make paperwork at the hospital a shitton easier.”

“You are a _terrible_ man.”


End file.
